My Cultural-Linguistic Heritage

My Cultural-Linguistic Heritage
The influence of our inherited cultural and linguistic heritage is perhaps less influential than the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the society we live in. The societal forces of our personal micro-environments largely impact who we are, how we see ourselves, and how we speak.
My ancestors are of European descent, mostly German, Irish, and English on both sides of my family. My mother’s English ancestors are reported to have arrived in Virginia in the early 1600s. Remaining ancestors are said to have immigrated at various times prior to the 20th century. English is the only language spoken in my family for many generations; the last German-speaking or Irish speaking ancestors are unknown.
My mother was born and raised in Northern Virginia near Washington DC, but has lived in California for over three decades. Her family remained in Virginia. My father is a native Californian who spent his entire life in the Monterey/Salinas area. Neither of my parents has any detectable regional accent.
I was raised in Salinas, California, a central California city whose population is largely Hispanic and whose main industry is agriculture. My childhood friends were somewhat racially and ethnically diverse, but I realize now that relatively few were Hispanic. It was not a conscious choice or overt discrimination by me or my parents, but more likely an outgrowth of the tendency to fraternize with people from ‘my part of town,’ which was South Salinas. South Salinas is both the most affluent and Anglo of the Salinas’s areas, with residents largely from upper-middle class households residing in older, established neighborhoods. The majority of Hispanics lived in East or North Salinas. The geographic a...

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...ever-present- all-purpose word “like” used wherever it may expeditiously serve. I never studied Spanish and learned only a few common Spanish words despite my upbringing in Salinas. I studied French in high school, but I failed to become even modestly proficient in the language, and have retained little of what I learned of French. I’m not sure why I chose to study French, but I think it was because it represented refined culture and a world far removed from Salinas.
How we speak clearly reveals much about our lives and the immediate society and culture that around us. From my examination of my family’s cultural and linguistic heritage, it seems to me that non-family environment and our peers have the greatest impact on our identities and our linguistic acquisition. It’s therefore not surprising that heritage languages are so rapidly lost by subsequent generations.